Who's Who of Victorian Cinema - A biographical guide to the earliest years of moving pictures, 1871-1901 - http://www.victorian-cinema.net/
<The confusion that existed at the birth of film to a very large extent still exists. Moving pictures did not arrive as a neat package on a specific date; those who were involved knew nothing of the phenomenon of cinema that was to come. They were scientists who saw film as an aid to their work, businessmen who hoped to exploit a new invention for the short period they expected the public to be attracted to it, or performers only doing what they would normally do on a stage. Moving pictures were just another invention in an age of inventions, or just another variety turn. What none could have foreseen was the grip that film would have on audiences, how the medium would develop and extend itself, and how the moving image would become dominant as a means of communication and entertainment in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Sample biography
Shibata Tsunekichi was a photographer employed by the Mitsukoshi department store in Japan. He appears as a filmmaker in April 1898, filming five scenes in Tokyo for the Lumière brothers, the first films in Japan by a native filmmaker. In 1899 he filmed three geisha dances, at the behest of Komada Koyo, benshi and proto-film producer. The dancers had trouble staying within the sight-lines laid down for them, but geisha films went on to become a very popular native product in the earliest years of Japanese filmmaking. The geisha films were first shown 20 June 1899. In September of the same year Shibata shot Inazuma goto Hobaku no Ba (The Lightning Robber is Arrested), with Yokoyama Umpei playing the detective and Sakamato Keijiro the burglar. The following day Shibata shot Shosei no Sumie (The Schoolboy's Ink Painting) with Yokoyama as a man painted with ink by two boys while he is asleep on a bench. In November 1899 he shot the most prestigious Japanese film so far, Momiji-gari (Maple Leaf Hunters), intended as an historic record of the Kabuki theatre actors Danjuro IX and Kikugoro V. Ninin dojoji (Two People at Dojo Temple) was made in December. Shibata, by now JapanPost too long. Click here to view the full text.
